This is the blog for the annual Science and Nonduality Conference, which will be held this year in San Rafael, CA, October 20-25. Conference organizers Maurizio and Zaya Benazzo will periodically post thoughts, links and updates here. Your thoughtful feedback is welcome!

Science and Nonduality Conference

Science and Nonduality Conference, October 20-25, 2010.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Giordano Bruno’s Science of Nonduality

For most Westerners—indeed, for most attendees of the upcoming Science and Nonduality Conference—the concept of metaphysical nonduality is associated with Eastern religion and/or the spirituality of “native peoples.” However, Western philosophy can in fact lay claim to a strong, if underappreciated, nondualist tradition of its own—one that also walks hand-in-hand with science.

Perhaps no thinker better epitomizes this tradition than Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), an excommunicated Italian monk whose radical philosophy earned him a death sentence from the Roman Inquisition. Ironically, the Catholic Encyclopedia provides perhaps the clearest summary of what might be called Bruno’s “science of nonduality.” Bruno taught that:

· * “God and the world are one;

· * matterandspirit, body and soul, are two phases of the samesubstance;

· *the universe is infinite;

· * beyond the visible world there is aninfinity of other worlds, each of which is inhabited;

· * this terrestrial globe has a soul;

· * in fact, each and every part of it, mineral as well as plant and animal, is animated;

· * allmatteris made up of the same elements (no distinction between terrestrial and celestialmatter)…”

The recalcitrant Bruno was ultimately burned at the stake for (among other things) the “theological error” of claiming “that the Holy Ghost is the soul of the world”—or, as he himself wrote in De magia, “every soul and spirit hath a certain continuity with the spirit of the universe…. The power of each soul is itself somehow present afar in the universe [and is] exceedingly connected and attached thereto.”

Notably, this “soul and spirit” were not metaphysically distinct from the universe—that is, Bruno did not argue for Cartesian-style substance dualism. Rather, he believed in monistic matter that expressed itself in two ways: potenza (power) and soggetto (subjectivity), the physical and the mental. And just as the physical and the mental were two sides of one coin, likewise, in Bruno’s view, there could be no real separation of man (or matter) from God.

Bruno’s cosmology was influenced by thinkers from Epicurus to Copernicus, and his ideas were picked up in turn by such luminaries as Spinoza and Goethe. Though he knew no calculus—it wouldn’t be invented for another hundred years—Bruno’s argument for an infinite, relativistic universe full of earthlike planets could have come straight from the 20th century, and has even been called a forerunner of quantum multiverse theory!

Appropriately, a statue of Giordano Bruno now stands near the Vatican at the site of his public execution, erected by modern students in solemn tribute to his unique and lasting vision. This October in San Rafael at the Science and Nonduality Conference, we may feel fortunate to freely and enthusiastically engage in the sort of speculation that once, in the West, doomed freethinkers like Bruno.

I there, just learned about the conference. My name is Isabelle Vallin-Thorpe, I am the daughter of Georges Vallin,PhD, professor of philosophy and philosopher, one of the very first exponents of non dualism in France and Europe. My father's work on Shankaracharya and the Vedanta in particular introduced french philosophers to non-dualism.My father who was a follower of Sartre's after the war and who published in the Temps Modernes discovered Kierkegaard and then Rene Guenon, through whom he discovered Indian philosophy and thought. He learned Sanskrit to be able to understand the sacred texts properly and discovered non dualism through Rene Guenon.He was professor of philosophy at Nancy II and then Lyon III and died quite prematurely at the beginning of the 80s, but left an important contribution in the form of several books and articles, including the Metaphysical Perspective, and I would like your conference to acknowledge his work, in one form or another. I am happy to send you more information, or direct you to some of his students should you need. email: isabelle.thorpe@bigpond.com regards

American poet Heather McHugh just won a MacArthur "genius grant". This poem is her meditation on Bruno:

What He Thought, by Heather McHugh

We were supposed to do a job in Italyand, full of our feeling forourselves (our sense of beingPoets from America) we wentfrom Rome to Fano, metthe Mayor, mulled a couplematters over. The Italian literati seemedbewildered by the language of America: they asked uswhat does "flat drink" mean? and the mysterious"cheap date" (no explanation lessenedthis one's mystery). Among Italian writers we

could recognize our counterparts: the academic,the apologist, the arrogant, the amorous,the brazen and the glib. And there was oneadministrator (The Conservative), in suitof regulation gray, who like a good tour guidewith measured pace and uninflected tonenarrated sights and historiesthe hired van hauled us past.Of all he was most politic--and least poetic-- soit seemed. Our lastfew days in RomeI found a book of poems thisunprepossessing one had written: it was therein the pensione room (a room he'd recommended)where it must have been abandoned bythe German visitor (was there a bus of them?) to whomhe had inscribed and dated it a month before. I couldn'tread Italian either, so I put the bookback in the wardrobe's dark. We last Americans

were due to leavetomorrow. For our parting evening thenour host chose something in a family restaurant,and there we sat and chatted, sat and chewed, till,sensible it was our last big chance to be Poetic, makeour mark, one of us asked

"What's poetry?Is it the fruits and vegetablesand marketplace at Campo dei Fiori

or the statue there?" Because I wasthe glib one, I identified the answerinstantly, I didn't have to think-- "The truthis both, it's both!" I blurted out. But thatwas easy. That was easiestto say. What followed taught me somethingabout difficulty,

for our underestimated host spoke outall of a sudden, with a rising passion, and he said:

The statue representsGiordano Bruno, broughtto be burned in the public squarebecause of his offence against authority, which was to saythe Church. His crime was his beliefthe universe does not revolve aroundthe human being: God is nofixed point or central governmentbut rather is poured in waves, throughall things: all thingsmove. "If God is not the soul itself,he is the soul OF THE SOUL of the world." Such washis heresy. The day they brought him forth to die

they feared he might incite the crowd (the manwas famous for his eloquence). And so his captorsplaced upon his facean iron maskin which he could not speak.

That is how they burned him.That is how he died,without a word,in front of everyone. And poetry--

(we'd all put down our forks by now, to listen tothe man in gray; he went on softly)-- poetry

Wonderful poem by Heather McHugh. Thanks for sharing this. I would like to add that Bruno's "non-dualism" can be traced back through Plotinus to Plato himself. Plato was indeed an "arch-dualist," in his Phaedo. But in his Republic, Symposium, Timaeus etc. he went beyond his previous dualism into a mode of thought that resembles advaita vedanta. Through this mode of thought he influenced Plotinus, Bruno, Spinoza, Hegel, Emerson and Whitehead, not to mention Rumi, Shelley, Emily Dickinson, Whitman, and Rilke. The west has a rich tradition of non-duality!Best, Bob Wallacewww.robertmwallace.com